


Unexpected Side-Effects

by drcalvin



Series: Lessons in Love and Devotion [3]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Community: 64damn_prompts, Ghosts, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 01:26:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drcalvin/pseuds/drcalvin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Yosaku would break his silly neck if he kept on like this, Johnny thought. He really needed to get out from under these rocks before something happened to his poor idiot partner."<br/>Unfortunately, moving half a mountain isn't all that easy, especially not when you're trapped beneath it... </p><p>Two years and three crazy bounty hunters: The adventures and (mis)fortunes of Roronoa Zoro, Johnny and Yosaku, before anyone ever heard about the Straw Hat Pirates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unexpected Side-Effects

**Author's Note:**

> For 64damn_prompts: #55 - landslide 
> 
> Thanks to loveandallthat for beta help!

"Can you still move your toes?" Yosaku's voice was wobbling around in the higher registers and sweat was dripping down from his nose down onto Johnny. Though he did try to control the tear thing, so Johnny didn't point out what a silly wuss he was being. 

"I'm fine," he said, wriggling all his toes and fingers, which Yosaku of course couldn't properly see, since three sets of toes-and-fingers were hidden beneath the rocks trapping him. "It's okay, just a bit of stone," he continued and tried to raise his head as much as said stone allowed. Whoa, the world spun even quicker when he did that! 

"It's _half a mountain_!" Yosaku wailed. "It's completely crushed that bandit bastard! And I can't get you out!"

"Nah, partner, you'll get me out, no problems! I trust you, man!"

That made Yosaku wail even louder, which worsened Johnny's headache so he closed his eyes for a moment. Just for a little time, he could take a nap and then... Before he had time to properly relax (which was surprisingly easy to do, considering how all of him except his head and left arm was buried beneath a heap of rocks) Yosaku was shaking him awake again. 

All that shaking was getting uncomfortable. 

"We've got some water? Or tea?" Johnny asked, mostly to get Yosaku to stop yanking at him. "Getting a bit chilly..."

"Tea! Yes, tea!" Yosaku ran off.

He'd break his silly neck if he kept on like this. Johnny really needed to get out from under these rocks before something happened to his poor idiot partner. His lucky being what it was, Yosaku returned with the lukewarm leftovers of their breakfast tea just as Johnny was falling into comfortable slumber. 

Even a bit dizzy as he was, Johnny thought he could detect more than a hint of their emergency booze in the tea as well. Hmm, why the hell not.

After he'd given him a drink, Yosaku made another valiant attempt at pushing aside the rocks. Using his sword as a lever, he did manage to shift the heap a bit backwards. Unfortunately, since the heap trapping Johnny consisted of several smaller stones with a man-sized boulder on top... and the entire thing held up by the even larger heap of stones that rested with great finality againt the mountain, it was hard to move it any way that didn't involve squashing Johnny's head. Much like he suspected that the bandit they'd been tracking had gotten squished beneath the even bigger piece of mountain that had ended his scream of _Oh shiiiiii–_ with a suspiciously splat-like sound. They probably wouldn't get a bounty for him, even if they did manage to dig out his remains. Bummer.

Once Yosaku gave up on trying to move the boulder, his sword had gained a sizeable dent. Johnny's forehead also sported a new bruise from where a few loose stone had hit him during Yosaku's efforts. Gray-faced and breathing like a beached whale, his partner slipped down in a huddle beside him, no longer even trying to hold back his tears.

"You gotta find... 'nother guy," Johnny managed. He still didn't really hurt anywhere, except for the bump on his forehead, but he had to admit that it was getting colder. His thoughts felt heavy too, as if they were buried in a rockslide as well, but hearing Yosaku's misery stopped him from taking a nap. Hell, they couldn't just give up, could they? 

"I can't leave you behind!"

"'S not leaving. You'll come back, yeah?" Hmm, breathing was definitely a bit more work than usual. Johnny stared up at the clear sky and wondered if it would really be that bad to just close his eyes and stop feeling cold. He wished he still had his sunglasses to protect from the glare of the sun. Unfortunately, they were also crushed beneath the rocks somewhere. A shame, such a snazzy pair too. 

And then there was Yosaku. He couldn't... He had to wait for him, right? "I'm not going anywhere," he said, feeling a moment of pride for how normal he managed to sound. 

Some more tears and another attempt to move the rock from Yosaku, before he kissed him farewell (no, Johnny sternly told himself, he kissed him _so-long_ because he was coming back soon. And he was going to wait for his partner right here, until Yosaku did) and started to climb down towards the valley.

Then he was gone.

The sky was truly remarkably blue, not a cloud to mar the endless sea above. It looked comforting. Though Johnny would really have liked to go out with Yosaku's face (preferably lined, gray and gone hideous with peaceful age) leaning over him, the blue wasn't too bad either. He should lose his shades a bit more often, perhaps.

He tried to give a content sigh, but the pressure on his chest stopped him.

Johnny closed his eyes. Just a moment. One little nap.

"Hey, you. Hey!" 

Someone was squeaking in his ear. He managed to turn around to glare at the little girl disturbing his rest.

"What do you want?"

"For one, _not_ seeing your ugly mug whenever I turn around. For at least another thirty years, preferably," the girl said, using language highly inappropriate for a brat her age. Whatever her age was. He thought she had dark hair, but when he blinked it looked as if she was translucent, or maybe white-haired. Confusing.

"Well, go away then," he said, faintly noticing that speaking seemed to have gotten easier these last moments. And here silly Yosaku was making such a fuss about him, hah.

"I can't," the girl said and made a great production of rolling her eyes. "He's worrying about you two idiots so much, but does he manage to stick around to take proper care of you? No, of _course_ not, so guess who has to spring in!"

Johnny laughed, because the faces the girl pulled where really quite entertaining. "You?" he suggested, and was rewarded by her blowing a raspberry at him.

"You'd better hope he won't try to use my sword.... his sword. Anyway! It is highly disrespectful to use a sword in the way your idiot partner attempted, whether they are named blades or not. No, you watch it, if he tries anything like that, I'll see to it that he slips and pokes you with it." 

"Who?"

"Who do you think? You've ogled us often enough that you should know."

"Hey, hang on a moment." Johnny managed to rise up on his elbow and poked the girl on the chest. "I do not ogle little girls, got it? Big girls, full-grown men and all variations on that theme, sure, but no shrimps your age!"

"Shrimp!?"

"Dear, I think we need to ask our friend to lie down again," a calmer voice said from behind him. Johnny tried to turn around, but before he could there was a cool hand on his shoulder, forcing back him down.

Strange. As he lay down, cold pressure closed in around his body again. He felt himself grow heavy, his breath rasping through his lungs.

"I know it's less comfortable, Mister Johnny, but it is for your own good." The woman who leaned over him this time was dressed all in white, her hair and eyes gleaming silver. She was very elegant, he thought, even as dizziness made his vision cloudy. "It is not healthy for you to move too far away from your body, even if it might temporarily make you feel better."

"Bwuh? Where d'ya all come from?"

"That way," the first girl said and pointed in the direction of the boulder. Actually, now that he looked closer, he was fairly sure that she was pointing through the boulder. As in, with her actual hand inside stone. 

There was something a bit odd about this, but Johnny couldn't _quite_ put his finger on what. 

"We are only here in spirit," the second woman said, perhaps noticing his confusion, "though my physical self is quickly coming closer."

"Wha?"

"Wadô, is it just me, or is he losing it a bit too much?"

"Indeed," the silvery woman said. "I am not an expert on the limits of the human body, but it seems as if the flow of life in him is interrupted. Interesting. I usually only see this reaction when most of it has already been spilled on the ground."

Johnny swallowed. He wasn't sure what they were talking about, but it didn't sound too nice. "Uhh, Wadô, maybe you could try moving some rocks?"

"Ex _cuse_ me, that would be Wadô Ichimonji to you," the dark-haired girl said and straightened her pale kimono. Fussy little shrimp. "Now then. If you're half the man you brag about being, you'd better not give up so easily. All the important bits are still inside." She waved a hand through the stone. "See, nothing crushed, no broken neck or anything!"

It almost felt as if a cold draft went through him when she did that, though his next breath came a tiny bit easier afterward. He wanted to thank her, but his lungs seemed to take this momentary relief as permission to cramp and the coughing kind of stopped him. It fucking hurt too, besides being rude.

"Oh dear, this doesn't sound good at all." The white woman laid a hand on his forehead and Johnny felt a different kind of cold run through him. For a moment, the world – blue sky, brown rocks, the smell of earth and mountains – melted away. It seemed as if he was dangling over a vast chasm, filled with rushing water that was waiting, no, that was reaching for him, trying to swallow him into its endless stream. 

"Shh," the woman said, her presence a moon-like blade in the darkness, "just breathe."

And the girl spoke too: a word shorter, much more fundamental than a simple 'no', yet heavier than all the rocks resting on him. To Johnny's fuzzy mind, it was like hearing not just the word, but the act, the entire concept of _no_ given name-shape-truth and spoken into the world. 

This was getting very odd indeed.

While he could still feel the pull of the cold water, the world took shape around him again; rocks (heavy) and sky (empty), body locked down – so why was he still so afraid to fall? 

A few pebbles slid down around him and he realized that his hearing had gone weird too, doubling just like the feel of his body. Could you even get dizzy ears? But he'd swear he could hear both someone sliding on rocks (climbing down a mountain?) and the river's song. Even in this state, he was fairly certain it wasn't Yosaku who had already come back. He knew his partner's gait and it had never sounded so heavy, as if the walker carried a burden so large that each of his steps created echoes throughout the world. 

"He's here now," the two – one? – women said, white and black and silver swirling in front of his eyes, until all he could see was an unsettling sharp smile. "Now remember: admiration is fine, but the ogling is getting very distracting. Please try to rein it in!" 

Before Johnny could ask what the hell that was all about, she dissolved like mist in sunlight. He found himself staring dumbly at the heap of rocks, neck bent at an uncomfortable angle. Her voice, however, remained behind, whispering in his ears 

(Or was it the river? Or had she always been that rushing sound? He couldn't remember any more.) 

"Please take better care in the future, Johnny the Bounty Hunter," her (their?) voice continued. "The role you have to play might be small and one that the stories will forget, but it remains necessary."

A black boot descended before his eyes, and someone was calling for him from far, far away. But the woman's voice had captured him, so he closed his eyes and listened.

"For the service I have done you today, would you do one for me?" she asked. Hunger in her voice, he thought, and remembered the scrape of steel against steel.

"Anything," he managed, further words caught by the relentless weight on his lungs. 

"Pull him out of his shell for me. Make him listen to something beyond the call of battle again," she whispered, and he shivered as the words seeped inside his brain and settled there, cold and hard. "Or he shall never manage to hear the one who is to be king, and then all our effort has been pointless."

"Who... Why?"

"Why? Because our name must ring throughout the world," she said. Despite the fact that her voice was a fading whisper – the soft sound of a cut through flesh, the last tone in the song of the sword – there was a thrum of power in it, increasing with every word."Our fame must ring from mountain to mountain, over all the seas... Only when our name echoes through Heaven and Hell, can we lay our tired souls to rest! Johnny, do you hear and understand me?" 

She was gone, not there, but he kept seeing her smile in front of him and it was so _hungry_.

"...the hell! Johnny! Johnny, can you hear me?"

"Yes!" he gasped, eyes flying open and free arm flailing uselessly. "Yes, I get it, I swear!"

"Oh shit, don't – just lie still!" Strong (warm) hands pressed down on his arm, and the blur of green and brown turned into the familiar face of Roronoa Zoro. Less familiar was the worried frown on him, but when Johnny blinked and managed a mouthed 'Bro?' the other swordsman's eyes cleared.

"Don't slip away again," he ordered and stood up, the white Meitô on his hip rattling against the other swords. In Johnny's confused brain, it called up the image of exaggaratedly rolling silver eyes.

 _Do you swear?_ they whispered, and he nodded. Half-choked and crushed he might be, but he knew that whatever oath he'd just sworn, it was one he would give his soul to keep.

With a curse, a grunt and a show of arm-strength that would've impressed Johnny more if he wasn't close to passing out, Zoro lifted the largest boulder off him. Pebbles, stones and rocks up to the size of a baby's skull slid out and bounced around Johnny's head, some bouncing off it.... but he could finally breathe again. 

He laughed, and coughed, and oh fuck but _everything_ hurt. 

(At least he wasn't drowning in the sky any more.)

When Yosaku came running back, two shepherds following him at a quick pace, they were surprised to find a pot of tea bubbling on a small fire. They were even more shocked to see Zoro, reading out loud from a sword catalogue to the banged-up Johnny, who was lying with his head on his lap.

"Me? Just happened to come this way. And he's the one who wanted to hear about swords," Zoro said in answer to Yosaku's stunned questions. "Think he's still a bit loopy, keeps babbling about not ogling girls in white...." He shrugged. "Tried to keep him awake."

Yosaku stared down at him. Johnny gave him a happy little wave and a see-I-told-you-so smirk. Hadn't he promised he'd still be around when his partner got back? And who was right here, just like agreed, huh?

The next moment, Zoro had a lapful of two bounty hunters, one of which was crying hysterically all over his shirt. He didn't seem to mind in the least.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this fic and/or series, I would love to hear some feedback :)


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